It's Randell's lovely voice, full and rounded but never overused, that gives the album its potency.

It promises much but never quite delivers.

Ultimately, it's a risk-free album of covers: accomplished, certainly, but hardly a novel experiment.

Impossible not to like.

Hip-hop is constantly being tweaked and nudged in new directions, but rarely is it reconfigured as radically, and thrillingly, as on this second album from Shabazz Palaces.

This third solo album is her most accessible yet.

May's an engaging and entertaining storyteller on the more breakneck material, particularly the dynamic Wild Woman and the melodically astute Hellfire Club. The ballads, however, are less distinguished.

With its 12 hushed and intimate tracks stripped back to the bare essentials--often just Fullbright's voice and guitar--the emphasis is on the strength of the songwriting (and, on Write a Song, the process itself).

While the album repays repeated listening, Burgess's vocals throughout conjure an air of wounded melancholy. Perhaps the key to real enjoyment is little and often.

The playing crackles with live-in-studio spontaneity and Hiatt emerges a hard-travellin' hero.

These songs respond beautifully to the pathos and drama of their subject, summoning a mood with subtle musical shifts but knowing when to deploy the grand gesture.

The band fails to sustain the album's early momentum, but there's still much to enjoy here.

On this persuasive second outing, the endless beach seems a grey and loveless place without the object of La Roux's desire.

Their lyrics don't always hit the mark.

Colin Elliot, who has worked with Richard Hawley, is a good match for the material, and his production skills make a cohesive whole of the diverse strands.

A decade on he treads a familiar path of homespun blues and rock'n'roll, happily unencumbered by musical fashion and with deeply satisfying results.

It all runs very smoothly--perhaps too smoothly for some tastes--but listen past the sheen and the headphone goods are there.

There are points where you sorely wish Morrissey had a few more apercus to impart.... But for every step back, Morrissey's paso doble takes two steps forwards. His years of refusal seem to be turning into years of renewal.

A fine outing that's less "preservation" than extension.

Jarrett's piano and Haden's bass take an affectionate, inquisitive tour through a set of jazz classics and old ballads, revealing fresh beauties at every turn.

There are droney lullabies such as Pine Box here, and lots of lengthy, oscillating guitar freakouts as well as the obligatory Velvet Underground pose.

No chance of paunchy homage here; lyrics cluttered with Munch, war and the Chartists and the tightly coiled energy of its best moments, such as Misguided Missile and instrumental closer Mayakovsky, suggest they are fronting up to middle age rather well.

Furler's lyrics do tend more towards generalities than specifics, but there are penetrating looks here at love's mind games (Fair Game), and being saved (Cellophane).

There's nothing desperately original about the 12 songs on their debut album.... But they're delivered with such winning enthusiasm that they make an old formula seem fresh.

Subtlety is, of course, the first casualty in the stampede for the folk mosh pit, and singer Jon Boden sometimes strains too hard for drama, lapsing into hamminess on murder ballad Greenwood Side.

Occasionally, mostly when Carter sings, Voices falls flat, but Phantogram's audacity is commendable.

Nothing on this third album could be described as flimsy.

You'd rather hope their systems/world music jams might be more wiggy than they are. Still, this second helping is a match for its predecessor.